Thursday, April 02, 2015

I’m rich!

The uBiome blog posts the results of a large (n>500) study of their users that shows a fascinating relationship between household income and a large change in a particular bacterium, the non-pathogenic Genus 713, actinobacillus. Their number crunching shows that wealthy people are far less likely to have this organism in their guts. For the statistically-minded, it’s a p-value of 0.00001 – as near to scientific certainty as you can get. If you have it, you’re poor. If not, you’re wealthy.

But wait, I did have a smidge (under 0.0008%) in the sample I submitted last May. Fortunately it cleared up by the following month and I’ve been Genus 713-free ever since! Obviously my microbiome is responding in advance to the large jackpot it knows I’ll be receiving any day now.

Now that science has demonstrated my wealth with such certainty, I am feeling extra generous today. Instead of money, I’ll share this comic (from the always excellent XKCD) which explains why they found this unassailable correlation between wealth and the microbiome:

About Me

Years building software and marketing teams at Apple, Microsoft, and startups in the US, Japan, and China have given me an awareness of how little I know, but at least I try to write it down before I forget.